Tuesday, March 17, 2015
How It All Began
One of the storylines has Charlotte, now recuperating at her daughters house, teaching an immigrant from Eastern Europe how to read so he can get a better job. A retired English teacher, at first Charlotte has little success. When she learns of Antons love of story and that he enjoyed reading novels in his native language, she throws away the clunky school texts meant for adult learners, and places Where the Wild Things Are in his hands. Although he struggles through the picture book, hes delighted by it. As the lessons progress, Charlotte feeds him How Tom Beat Captain Najork and His Hired Sportsmen (new to me! Its by the great Russell Hoban.), Charlottes Web, and The Finn Family Moomintroll.
As Anton plows through each book, pushed forward to find out what happens next, he has the following insight, so well-expressed I want to share it in its entirety:
"This increasing facility, this breakthrough, reminded him of childhood, of that extraordinary realization that all those black marks on the page could speak, that they were words, language, that they related to what came out of peoples mouths, out of his own mouth. This time round, the black marks of another language began at last to make sense, to leap from obscurity, to tell a story. It was though you broke into a new world, were handed a passport to another country."
Wonderful stuff, and a wonderful book.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment